Irrigation or watering systems for controlling irrigation events for irrigation areas are well known in the art. Typical watering systems include control boxes configured to open and close irrigation valves according to predefined watering schedules. Most conventional watering systems do not account for the actual moisture content of the soil when executing the watering schedules. Accordingly, such systems are prone to wasting water resources and energy required to transport water within the system.
Additionally, conventional systems include controllers that are hard-wired to irrigation valves. Accordingly, the wires and associated connections are susceptible to damage from exposure to the elements, burrowing rodents, hand tools, heavy equipment, and the like. Additionally, the wires typically are buried and often difficult to locate and repair.
Some recent watering systems use soil moisture sensors to detect the moisture content of the soil and do not execute a watering event unless the moisture content is below a certain threshold. Although such systems may conserve water by executing a watering event only when the soil is dry enough and ending the watering event as soon as the soil reaches a predefined saturation limit, because the systems are wired, they are unable to cover large irrigation areas without excessive cost and installation difficulties. Additionally, the soil moisture sensors of conventional watering systems are designed to detect the moisture content of the soil only on a single plane or at a single depth. Even complex watering systems known in the art often require an installer to know and input a significant number of the characteristics of the irrigation area to be watered when installing the system. For example, an installer often needs to know and input the date, time, soil type for each irrigation zone, plant types for each irrigation zone, ground slope by zone, watering days, watering times, and target watering durations.
Also, conventional systems do not utilize GPS technology for locating functioning and malfunctioning system components and enabling accurate data synchronization across multiple components.